Untested: Homecoming

This is the start of a new series of posts for ideas I want to put out that are untested by me for one reason or another. Usually because I haven’t been in the position to perform the trick or because it’s an idea I have for a venue or setting in which I don’t perform.

Homecoming

Why It’s Untested: I actually like this idea quite a bit and I’ve been sitting on it since a reader, JP, sent me an email with the basic concept in March of 2020.

It sort of requires a specific situation for you to be able to perform it, and I haven’t really encountered that situation in the past year. But as the world progresses more towards normality over the next few months, you may come across an opportunity to perform this, and I think it would be a big hit.

I will describe a somewhat “idealized” version of a situation in which you might use it, but you’ll easily see how you could vary the presentation to be used in a different scenario.

This is sort of a strange trick because I think the best use for it would be over video chat with someone who is in the same house as you. It’s not necessary to do it that way, but that’s how I’ll describe it, because that’s how I’ve been imagining it.

What it looks like: You tell your spouse, “Hey, so the people at work are bugging me to do a magic trick for the corporate office over video conference tomorrow. I have something in mind, but I need to test it out. Would you mind sitting through it and giving me your thoughts?”

You go to a different room of the house and fire up a zoom conference with your wife in the living room.

She can see you sitting a your desk and in the background, on the wall, is large manilla envelope with a question mark on it.

“Okay,” you say, “so the idea is you’re going to choose a random number to select something from this numbered list on my phone. When I do it tomorrow, they’ll be randomly choosing one of the light bulbs in our line of high-quality, long-lasting light bulbs. But the trick sort of works better if it’s something you care about. So instead I’m going to have you randomly select a member of your extended family. Give me a number between 1 and 42.”

Your wife says 20 and you open up a list you made on your phone of members of her extended family. You scroll down to the person at #20 and it’s her cousin Greg.

“Okay, perfect, cousin Greg. That was a free choice, yes? If you had chosen #19, you would have had Aunt Virginia. If you had chosen #21 you would have had Grandpa Bill. Now check this out.”

You get up out of your seat and walk to the back wall and remove the large envelope with the question mark on it. You walk back towards the desk and sit back in the chair, open the envelope and—holding it up to the camera—you slide out an 8x11 picture of cousin Greg’s bit fat head.

Your wife reacts and after a beat or two you pull the picture aside and reveal that you are now cousin Greg. That’s right, you’re transformed into the randomly selected family member. Cousin Greg can now go downstairs and reunite with your wife who he hasn’t seen in over a year.

Method: This is based on those classic stage illusions where the magician is wearing a mask for whatever weird reason. Then at some point he walks behind something and switches with someone in a matching mask. That person now acts as the magician for a little while as the real magician runs backstage and around the theater and up to the balcony so that when the faux-magician on stage vanishes, the real one can jump around on the balcony, “Here I am! It’s me! Mr. Magician!”

Here’s Copperfield doing it with a motorcycle helmet instead of a mask. But you get the idea.

The beauty of doing this over video chat is you can do it without a mask. You just need a brief moment out of frame to switch the two people, and then to block the person’s head with something until the change is revealed. That’s not hard to do. You can block out your head with a quarter if you hold it close enough to the camera.

And in this case you have something much better than a quarter. You have a large envelope and the large prediction you pull from it.

Here is an overhead look of how, generally, I see the choreography working.

So, you see, the natural walking path you’re going to take is going to take you out of the field of vision as you walk to the prediction and back to the desk with it. (It’s the “natural” walking path because your chair is directly behind you, so it makes sense you would veer around it rather than just trampling over it like a moron.) It’s as you return with the prediction, in the brief moment you’re fully off screen, that you’ll switch with the other person (with them either taking the prediction or already having a matching envelope in their hands ready to go).

From the point that the other person enters the camera’s field of vision, they will be holding out the envelope so it blocks their face. This isn’t unnatural. It makes sense that “you’ would be putting that front and center.

Ideally the other person would be in matching clothes, or at least something similar. If their body is vastly different than yours, they may need to block more of the image than just their head, but that pretty much goes without saying. They will hold out the envelope to the camera, remove the image of their face, then slide that image off to the side to reveal that it’s them holding the image now.

Obviously you’ll need to force the person at the beginning of the trick, but it really doesn’t matter how you go about doing that. You can use DFB, or a svengali pad, or names written on cards that you riffle force to, or whatever. No one is going to care about that part of the trick by the time it’s over.

You could, of course, do the trick for anyone over video chat. It doesn’t need to be for someone in your house. It doesn’t even need to be someone the person watching even knows. You could force one photo from a group of photos, then reveal your prediction matches, then reveal you’ve changed into that person. That would work too. However, the reason I wrote it up the way I did is because, as a trick, I think it’s pretty good. But as a way to surprise someone with the appearance of a loved one they didn’t know was in town, it becomes a capital-M, Magical moment.

The Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn't, Part 2

Continuing on from this post, here is Part 2 of the Penguin Magic Monthly Interview That Wasn’t…

It seems like you could easily make magic your fulltime career, but you don’t. Why not? Do you just love your day job? Are you nervous that if magic was your fulltime job that you’d get sick of it?

The other work I do outside of The Jerx is all writing/consulting work. So I just consider it all sort of the same thing. In magic I write and come up with ideas and outside of magic I write and come up with ideas. It wouldn’t make sense to solely focus on magic, because the other projects I’m involved in are as enjoyable and probably more lucrative if I broke it down on an hourly basis. And it’s not like I have some great love of magic or something. I’m only passionate about it in the manner that I incorporate it in my own life and in my own interactions. I hardly ever watch magic on TV or online. I don’t sit at home and think, “Ah, I know want I want to read…a biography of Thurston!” So it’s not like I’m looking to enmesh myself more in the magic world.

You have shared a lot on your blog, most of it for free. Is there anything that you regret sharing? Is there anything that you wish you could have kept for yourself?

Yeah, there are a few things I wish I hadn’t shared, but I’m not going to mention what they are because that would only bring more attention to them, when I’d rather they fly under the radar. Some things I’ve removed from the site completely because I realized I wanted less people potentially doing them. Almost everything that makes it to the books I find myself wishing I hadn’t released at some point. That’s probably because I tend to look back on the actual experiences of performing the trick and I want to keep the “magic” of those moment for myself. It would be like if you wrote a poem for your wife and she really loved it and then you said to people, “I’m going to put this poem in a book so you can give it to your wife.” That would be weird.

But I wouldn’t have the time to explore and create and perform magic without the people who support the site. So as much as I feel like there are things I’d rather hold onto for myself, they are part owners of the material, in my eyes.

What’s the best worst idea you have ever had? What’s an idea that seemed really promising but just fell flat?

I very rarely think, “this is promising,” only to have it fall flat. Sometimes a trick will need some tweaking but I hardly ever overestimate a trick. I underestimate tricks all the time. That why I made the rule when I started doing reviews in the newsletter that I wouldn’t give a trick a proper review without performing it at least a couple times first.

I can’t think of a “best worst idea.” But I’ll give the story of a trick I put a lot of effort into that just got an exasperated shake of the head in return. And that was when I ate my friend’s throw pillow. (I mentioned I was going to discuss this trick wayyyy back in 2018, but forgot to.)

My friend had this small, ugly, red, vinyl-ish throw pillow with black Chinese characters on it that always looked very out of place on his couch. It seemed like whenever someone was over his place when I was there, they would comment on it.

So one day when I had unfettered access to his place I took the insert out of the pillow and replaced it with white cotton candy. And when I was in the company of my friend I unzipped the pillow, emptied the “stuffing” out, folded up the cover up and set everything in my lap and began eating the elements of the pillow.

Inside of the pillow, along with the cotton candy, were a few squares of red fruit roll-up that I had another friend paint the pattern of the throw pillow on with edible paint. So the folded up cover of the throw pillow somewhat resembled this packet of painted fruit roll-ups. At one point while eating the cotton candy, I pushed the actual throw pillow cover, which was in my lap, between my legs. Leaving the duplicate edible cover visible under some of the remaining cotton candy stuffing. As I got down to the end (which went somewhat quickly because I was drinking water and dissolving the cotton candy as I went), I picked up the fruit roll-up packet—masquerading as the red, vinyl pillow cover—and I shoved everything in my mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it.

I think the extent of the reaction was him saying, “What are you doing?” As I went, “Mmm-mmm-mm!”

So I went to the hassle of special ordering white cotton candy and edible paint, and having a friend paint on fruit roll-ups to do a “trick” with no purpose. The only reason I thought to do it was because my friend had this bright throw pillow on his couch and one day another friend of ours said, “That pillow looks like a fruit roll-up.”

This was many years ago and I’ve become much better at giving these weird moments context.

What products do you recommend to other magicians (Your own products excluded)?

Outside of the recommendation I make in the newsletter, I don’t really.

But let’s pretend I do. If I were to recommend stuff, I’d recommend utility devices over individual effects. I like multi-taskers. If you buy “Grandpa’s Floating Top” then you’re just floating grandpa’s top like everyone else who bought it. However, if you buy a good IT system you can work on various effects and mix it up more.

Some of my most-used multi-taskers are: a Jak’s style wallet, Xeno app (to know a free choice), DFB or Inertia App (to force things), Loops, Vernet-Band writer, a thumbtip, and Quinta.

What do you think about magicians who take your amateur presentations and adapt them for their professional work?

It’s cool but a little strange because 99% of the material I’ve released came out of performing for friends. So seeing someone perform a trick of mine on stage is a little bizarre, but it’s interesting.

Unfortunately for the professional magicians, the best ideas I have—ideas about alternative ways of presenting tricks, getting in and out of tricks, extended the experience of the trick beyond boundaries of the effect itself—tend to be the things that don’t really translate to stage.

How do you find so many opportunities to perform in amateur settings?

If I’m doing something for my own benefit then I’m really kind of lackadaisical about things. But when the site became reader-supported, then I owed it to the people who were funding the site to schedule time to perform. So that’s what I do. I make sure I’m performing a certain number of times a week. Mostly my own material and ideas, but also trying out new releases for the review newsletter.

To perform social magic a lot—without wearing out the same people with magic tricks—you need to maintain a large social circle, meet up with them regularly, and put yourself in positions to interact with strangers. I make a lot of plans to see people, and I work in public places like coffee shops or co-working spaces. So I have a pretty good influx of new and old people to try things out on. I’ve become a lot more chatty with people since starting this site, simply because I need to be to meet new people and get new feedback.

Obviously Covid changed how I went about all that, but I’m gradually easing into a return to more regular performing.

If you want to see a numerical breakdown of a typical performing month pre-Covid, you can find that here.

As time goes by your blog moves more and more out of the “underground” and becomes more and more popular. What do you think of this popularity? Do you like that you are becoming more popular, or do you prefer obscurity?

I have no interest in being “popular” and, at the same time, I’m not trying to be “underground” or “obscure” either.

In my utopia, only the people who really like the site and feel they get value from it would bother visiting the site. This isn’t something I’m doing for a mass audience. If this site brings something positive to people, then I’m glad that they find it and enjoy it. But if people don’t like it, I’m perfectly happy with that too. I don’t need or want more readers.

Dustings #33

I’m so angry!

After making my big announcement yesterday, I went to the bank with the $600 check that Vanishing Inc., gave me to buy this site and the check bounced! Apparently they didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover it. And when I brought it up to them they were like, “Can we pay you in Vanishing Inc Points?” When I refused that option they stopped returning my phone calls and emails. They had changed the password to get into my squarespace account for this site too, but I was able to guess what they changed it to (magicboyz69) and recover the account.

So it looks like I’m going back to running the site myself. Ignore everything that was said yesterday.

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Supporter Jon S., sent me this article about an advertising campaign that used images secretly hidden in a block of color that are only revealed when you adjust your filter settings in Instagram.

I can definitely see some presentational uses for such a thing, but I have no understanding of how one might go about creating such an image. Is it a simple step-by-step thing you could do in photoshop? Or is it a more complicated process?

If you know how it’s done—especially if it’s something that’s doable by the average person—send me an email and let me know.

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Second Helpings: Cyanotypes by Elisha Ott

In the pdf here you will learn the second best thing from Elisha’s ebook, Cyanotypes.

If you’d like me to post the second best thing from your book/lecture/multi-trick download, etc, then you can find the details about doing so here.

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I just did an unintentional trick at the grocery store about 30 minutes ago. It’s probably not something I could pull off again if I tried, but it just so happened to work out tonight.

Sometimes when I’m in the grocery store and I’m pushing the cart and I want to do something on my phone real quick—like change what I’m listening to or reply to a text—I will push the cart so it rolls away from me at about the same pace as I’m walking behind it. So the cart is moving in front of me, but I’m not touching it, and my hands are free to do something on the phone.

So I did that maneuver in the store just a little while ago, and I walked passed the end of an aisle. A woman who was in the aisle saw me walk past and said, “Hey!” and ran up to me. I thought it might be someone I knew, but I couldn’t really tell because everyone is masked up. So I was like, “Oh… hey?” And she looked from me to the cart to the phone in my hand and she said, “We’re you controlling your cart with your phone?” From her perspective, she just saw the cart moving without me touching it, and me doing something on my phone behind it. Like they would make an app to steer a shopping cart.

Had I understood what she was saying immediately, I would have joked around with her. “Yes. Of course. Wait… you’re not still pushing your shopping cart these days, are you.” But I had no idea what on earth she was talking about, so I said, “What on earth are you talking about?” She explained she saw the cart moving in front of me and I wasn’t touching it and eventually we got it sorted out. It was a strange exchange. But also an enjoyable one. So I got her number. I’ll let you know if it turns out she always makes the least probable assumptions about things, or if this was a one-off situation.

The New Jerx!

Hey, everyone. So I have some big news to share. As the announcement video above explains, after almost six years as an independent magic blog, the Jerx has been acquired by Vanishing Inc., and is now part of the VI family.

Josh and Andi have a lot of ideas for the future of this site and I’m really excited to see where they take it.

That’s not to say I won’t be involved going forward. I’ll still be here, mainly in a behind-the-scenes capacity. I will still have a monthly post here, but in the future the site is going to rely primarily on user-submitted content and funny memes found on facebook.

In July this site will be going behind a paywall. It will be just $15 a month to read the site (and the archives) or $150 for the year. Or you can have access to it with the Vanishing Inc+ plan which is only $70/month and includes Masterclass: Live; Vanishing Inc.’s Showtime; free shipping; and Vanishing Inc. Presents, The Jerx, A Magic Humor Blog™.

(This is a separate fee from the supporter fee paid a couple months ago. The rewards package for that is still set to be released in 2022. The book that will be coming out at that point will be called Magic is Fun. It’s a collection of essays Josh wrote for his local IBM ring when he was 8.)

As was mentioned in the video, the Vanishing Inc team is going to be going into the archives and deleting any posts with curse words or sexual innuendo, so if you’re interested in any of those posts you should go and make a copy of them for your own records. I understand why Josh and Andi want to make this a “family friendly” site, and I look forward to the challenge of working within those confines. (The truth is, dirty words are a crutch. As some critics of this site have said in the past, I only use them for “shock value.”)

And, as a commercial entity, it doesn’t make sense to have posts that are too critical of other magicians or their products, so those posts will be removed as well. As Josh repeatedly said during our negotiations, “It’s fun to be funny without making fun!” He wants that to be our “guiding principle” for the site.

I know some details about the future schedule for the site, but not everything has been finalized yet. I know my posts will appear here on the first Thursday of every month. So check in then to hear from me.

On Fridays, there will be a new feature called, Josh’s Joke Book, which Josh describes as, “A silly celebration of japes and guffaws to tickle you ribs and your brain. My ‘joke book’ will shine a spotlight on humor in and out of magic, and will feature some of my favorite comic voices of all time. From Cosby to Garfield!”

So that sounds fun.

On Wednesdays, Andi will take the reins with his column, “Things I Should Have Said.” Here’s how Andi describes it: “Things I Should Have Said is going to be a column that will include excerpts from my notebooks of clever comebacks and devastating heckler stoppers that I thought of well after the incidents that inspired them occurred. Whether dealing with a jerky spectator, an angry spouse, or a group of teens making fun of you on a bus, you’ll never again be at a loss for words because you’re flustered or crying too hard to put together a sentence. These clever retorts will allow you to turn your Sad Losses into GladWins!” Andi says he has material to fill this column for “at least the next decade.”

Just so you know, I no longer have access to the inner workings of the site itself. I will write my posts in email and send them to VI to upload them onto the site. If there’s a link that doesn’t work or something like that, please contact the Vanishing Inc staff to get it fixed.

Don’t expect much to change with the look of the site. One of the great things about going into business with Josh and Andi is that they’ve assured me the VI partnership will be as unobtrusive as possible. This site won’t just be some lame marketing tool for Vanishing Inc. I think they may end up putting a small banner ad in the sidebar, but beyond that, the aesthetic of the site should remain the same. Which I really appreciate.

There you have it! A new age begins for The Jerx. It’s been great running this site as a one-man operation for six years. But it’s also exhausting to be the sole content creator for the site, the newsletters, and the books. So I’m really happy with this deal I’ve cut with Vanishing Inc. I can’t wait to see where the site goes next and I’m proud to have a 2% stake in The New Jerx.

Taking a Personal Day

Hey there. I don’t like to do this, but I’m going to have to push today’s post to tomorrow. I have something kind of big in the works that’s going to be keeping me a little busy today, and rather than rush something out to you, I’m just going to delay it until tomorrow. See you then.

For those who need their daily fix, here is a dumb post from my old blog where I pretend to get worked up about the trick, Any Card at Any Number.

Shining the Spotlight of Truth (From April 2005)

The Magic Cafe used to have a great section called Sweet and Sour where people could complain about magicians or magic dealers that had done them wrong. Brooks got rid of it because his advertisers were like, "What the fuck?" and Brooks caved.

But where does one go when he wants to complain? Well, I can't speak for you, but I go here because it's my own damn site. And let me tell you...I am livid! I was duped! I was scammed!

I recently purchased Volume Six of this Alan Ackerman’s DVD set specifically so I could perform "Any Card At Any Number." What a great sounding effect! I can't wait to perform it! I gleefully thought to myself.

Boy was I wrong.

Dreadfully, dreadfully, wrong.

I admit it, I got taken for a ride.

Any card at any number? Hmmm, not quite. Just try and perform this effect with the number 6.5 or -40 for instance. Doesn't work so hot, does it Mr. Ackerman? Or should I say: Mr. Ack-conman.

Oh, and it really should say any playing card. Like, for instance, say you wanted to perform the trick Library Card At 112—well brother, you're fucked.

Please join my campaign to rename all effects called Any Card at Any Number to Any Playing Card In A Standard Deck Of Anglo-American Playing Cards (Not Including the Jokers) At Any Whole Number Between One and Fifty-Two Inclusive.

It's time we fight for some honesty in magic ads.

Tricks to Present With Distraction

Could you talk about the tricks you perform in the Distracted Artist Style?

Also do you do any tricks when you are paying for something at a shop like a bill change? —CE

I’ll take these in reverse order, because the second question is easier. No, I don’t do anything when paying for something at the store. Honestly, if I was working as a cashier, I probably would like someone to break up the monotony of the day with a quick magic trick. But while I’d like it, I’d also probably think that person was a little thirsty for attention. And I’d rather not come off that way.

We don’t think about this much as magicians, but I can tell you from talking to normal people that they feel there is a transactional nature to magic: I will do something amazing and you will give me a response. I feel it’s awkward to rope someone into that transaction who didn’t ask for it.

That is, in fact, one of the benefits of the Distracted Artist style of performing. You can perform magic for strangers without putting them in a position where they feel they have to acknowledge how clever or incredible you are. They are released from that obligation. It’s magic that happens on the periphery. It’s not something you do for someone. It’s something you’re either doing for yourself or something you don’t even realize you’re doing at all.

That said, what types of tricks would best fit in this style? What types of tricks are most likely to seem like they’re “just happening”?

I think the answer is:

• Vanishes

• Levitations

• Animation/Telekinesis

In a more fantastical version of the world, these are the sorts of things that I think could “just happen” or at least they could happen without much thought on the part of the magician. Making something appear feels more like it would take concentrated effort. But those three things above feel (to me) like you might just do them without thinking (assuming you had such abilities).

Here are the tricks I do most from those categories:

Vanish - Vanishing Napkin - This is probably my most performed trick ever. It’s become second nature. I do it even if no one is around. Whenever I’m eating or drinking something and have a paper napkin, I will ball it up at the end and vanish it. (Just a false transfer and a ditch) This is the small-scale, environmentally friendly magic I would likely perform in real life if I had low-level magic abilities.

Levitation - Floating Hoodie String (Calen Morelli) - This comes from Calen’s Penguin lecture. I am someone who once, while driving home from work, tied my hoodie strings together absentmindedly and I didn’t really notice it until I was turning into my neighborhood and I realized I had tied them together through one of the spaces in my steering wheel. And when I tried to turn the wheel I couldn’t because the way the strings were tied prevented it from turning. I had to lower my head down so it was even with the dashboard so I had the slack necessary to turn the wheel enough. I almost drove off the road. This would have definitely been in the top .1% of dumbest ways to die.

My point being, distractedly playing with my hoodie strings is very natural for me. So this trick fits perfectly with that predilection and my casual fashion sense.

Animation - Forklift (Geoff Williams) - This is off his Miracles for Mortals DVD and it’s a way to make a fork move on the table. I’ve always liked this animation because the fork moves while you’re not moving. So it doesn’t look the fork is connected to you and you’re just dragging it along.

Those previous two tricks use the same gimmick which is very easy to carry with me unobtrusively, so that’s why they get a lot of play.

There are other tricks I’ll do if I’m carrying the necessary prop or gimmick with me (which maybe I’ll get into in a future post) but those three above are probably at the top of my list. And I think the broad categories of levitations, vanishes, and animations are probably a good place to start when looking for effects to use in the Distracted Artist style.

A Magic Lesson From the Bible

I’ve been reading the bible this year. Have you read this thing before? It’s wild, dude. I decided to read it because I was thinking about some of the old biblical stories and I wanted to hear more about them. Like I wanted to know more about Noah and the ark. Noah builds the ark and takes on two of every animal and then god floods the entire world, killing every animal and human not on the ark. That’s a crazy ass story, I thought. I need to read the full version.

So I get the bible and I start reading and… that is the full version. That’s all there is to the story. God gets mad and kills every living thing and the story about this is two paragraphs long. It’s truly bananas. If the bible moved at a breakneck speed, I might cut it some slack. But there is a lot of super dull parts in there too. There are books of the bible devoted to just a bunch of boring rules. “Here’s what you do if you touch a person with a sore.” “Here’s what to do if your animal falls in a hole.” I was not expecting all the rules and for god to be so chatty as he is in the old testament.

Regardless of that, I did find one thing so far that struck me as relevant to magic. It’s in the book of Mark and it happens right after Jesus has miraculously fed 5000 people until the point they were sated with just five loaves of bread and two fish.

Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.

Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.

Immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

They “had not understood about the loaves.” When he fed 5000 people with almost no food, they just didn’t get it. Only when they see him walking on water do they really wrap their heads around the fact that he can perform miracles. These people were already his disciples, and yet the thing with the loaves was too much for them to comprehend.

This happens way more than you would think with magic. When you first meet someone, you need to gently break them down with your tricks. You want small miracles and/or simple plots. If the effect is too complicated, their brain doesn’t process it like you would want. And if it’s too strong (and it’s the first thing they’ve seen) they’ll find some way to block it out. Bob Farmer was the first magician I heard express this. He said, “You can't start with a really good trick—the audience will not be up to speed and they won't get it.” He’s right.

I’m not quite sure why this is, but I have a few theories:

1. You’re doing something too far removed from the “magic tricks” they’re used to, so they’re not prepared to process it the way they would need to in order to really understand the impossibility.

2. If there’s too many moving parts to the trick, there’s more for them to “track.” And therefore there’s more for them to feel like they might have missed. If you have a “big” effect where a lot of things are coming together at the end, it’s easy for them to think they didn’t know to be tuned into some particular thing early on and thus for them to feel like they just “missed” something that would make this all understandable. Like those disciples with the fish and the loaves. “Wait… Jesus is still feeding them? What happened? Was there a loaf delivery? Did someone catch more fish? What did I miss here?”

3. Being fooled requires being vulnerable. If this is the first thing they’ve seen you perform and they don’t know you that well, they’re not going to open themselves up to being super fooled. They’re going to be guarded. Once they’re comfortable with you and they know you’re not trying to make them look dumb or make yourself look cool, they will be more willing to give themselves over to the experience.

It’s probably some combination of these factors. All I know is, when I look back on the tricks that didn’t “hit” with people, it’s almost always been an issue of a trick being “too much” for the moment.

When you start performing for someone new, especially in a one-on-one situation, I think it’s best to think of it as a seduction. When you meet someone you’re interested in romantically, your first move isn’t to tell them to strap in to your fuck-swing. No, you build up to that. Now, you may build up to that over the course of a year or over the course of a night, but either way there’s almost always going to be some type of progression.

These days, if the fact that I do magic comes up with someone new, the first thing I’ll show them is usually something quick, visual, unobtrusive, and seemingly impromptu. Something visual with some change or a ring. Or maybe moving a fork on the tale with my mind, or something like that. Once that seed has been planted, I can allow them to pursue me into greater depths of magic. So if the fork moves and they’re like, “Wait! What? Show me something else.” I can be like, “Ah, I don’t really… I don’t have anything on me. That fork thing is just an old trick I learned as a kid. The stuff I’m doing these days is a little weirder.” I can then gauge their interest based on that statement and if they seem like they’re on board I can say, “Actually, you’d probably be good for something I’ve been working on. With your dance background you probably have a good sense of your own physicality.” Or whatever. I take something I know about them and indicate why that would be a good trait for this thing I’m working on. Then I transition into something a little more personal and a little stranger, but I still don’t push the envelope too much. In future meetups I will take things a little further and mix-up the sort of effects I show them. After a few interactions, I find people are generally acclimated to seeing magic from me and I can do pretty much any sort of trick I want at that point.

Keep this in mind, most people have never seen close-up magic. If they have, there’s a good chance it hasn’t been that good. Maybe it’s a 3/10. You don’t need to come in with a 10/10 trick. If you come in with a 5/10, you will have something that is significantly better than they have ever seen before. So the instinct to hit them with the strongest magic you have right from the start is unnecessary, and probably counterproductive.

Start with something solid, but simple, and build off that.

Unless you can do something as straightforward and impossible as walking on water, then go ahead and get you that messiah clout.

Jesus (Colorized)